Sometimes When You Lose, You Win: by Devi Laskar

I’m not new to the computer, and I’m not new to moving files from one “place” on the computer to the other. I’ve been working on a computer and moving things for years, even decades.

Yet accidents happen. I accidentally erased a lot of my work recently, as I moved it from one place to another and although I’d backed up my files, and placed copies of my work on other drives, I still could not find what I’d been working on.

After the initial panic and then a series of anxiety attacks, I only calmed down when a more tech-savvy mind than mine showed me how to find a copy of what I’d lost – and to “cut and paste.” It is going to be a long and tedious process, and it will no doubt eat in to the hours of my winter break. But I’m oh so grateful that I even have the opportunity to get back some of what I’ve lost, a good eight and a half months’ worth.

Still, there were a few hours that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t see my work again, and I tried to remember what I had lost. And that’s when I won something good. I remembered a few things, and I wrote them down, and then I remembered a few more things. A pattern emerged of the things I remembered and then I rearranged these memories and I used them to give my protagonist this exact problem: losing something precious, being uncertain of recovery, wondering what the consequences will be.

And from this my outline emerged and now I have the starving skeleton of an outline for my new novel. I know the beginning and I know the end. Now I have to find something to fatten up the middle of the story like Santa’s belly, and I’m good to go.